Like many early Beatles songs, the title of "She Loves You" was framed around the use of personal pronouns. But unusually for a love song, the lyrics are not about the narrator's love for someone else; instead the narrator functions as a helpful go-between for estranged lovers:
You think you lost your love,
Well, I saw her yesterday.
It's you she's thinking of –
And she told me what to say.
She says she loves you ...
This idea was attributed by Lennon to McCartney in 1980: "It was Paul's idea: instead of singing 'I love you' again, we'd have a third party. That kind of little detail is still in his work. He will write a story about someone. I'm more inclined to write about myself."Looking back, engineer Norman Smith admitted to not thinking much of the song at first -- or at least the lyrics, anyway. "I was setting up the microphone when I saw the lyrics on the music stand," Smith recalled. "I thought I'll just have a quick look. 'She loves you yeah yeah yeah, she loves you yeah yeah yeah, she loves you yeah yeah yeah yeah.' I thought 'Oh my God, what a lyric! This is going to be one that I do not like.' But when they started to sing it -- bang, wow, terrific. I was up at the mixer jobbing around."
I Want to Hold Your Hand has - rightfully so - always been the clarion call for Beatlemania here in America, but She Loves You is the one for the Brits, coming out just a few months earlier. No matter how many times I've heard it over the years, that opening rush, where it sounds like youthful hope itself comes tumbling out of an overstuffed closet door, is more & more infectious to me. Here's Liverpool Stadium in 1964.
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